We recently built a SBS 2008 on ML115 G1, using the onboard NVIDIA RAID for a RAID 1 OS arry of 2 x 160GB, and had intended to set a second DATA array of 2 x 1TB, but one of the disks failed whilst building...

So the server was built using just the single RAID1 array for the OS, and the remianing 1TB standalone disk for the DATA whilst we awaited replacement. This disk was left as normal SATA, not RAID in the BIOS, as the 2nd array was never created.

Now we have the new disk, I want to create the new 2nd array and use the existing 1TB as a source disk for the mirroring, but each time I go to create it, I am warned all data will be destroyed on the disks.

Is there a way of creating this new mirrored array without having to destroy the existing data, or otherwise copy it to another location and then copy it back? This would be a standard operation with most hardware RAID...

Coming back to this one after the motherboard freaked out, and we had to transfer everything to new motherboard and hardware, braking all the existing RAID.

Having researched more and given our current situation, we've decided the onboard RAID is junk, we want to add a decent RAID card that will support 2 x RAID 1 arrays, the DATA array notable being built from 2 x 1TB drives.

Does anyone have any recommendations for a suitable RAID card for this server that comes in at a reasonable price?